[Kaljamaha]

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

On the issue of the special provinces: I created them based how things are in my own homebrew fantasy world. So, thematics totally trumped balance when I designed the special provinces. Also, I play SP almost exclusively, with strong independents, very hard research and few (usually 25%) sites, so that obviously gives me a different perspective. And I'm mostly a sandbox type player.

That said, I fully understand that in this game, you expect to get a reward if you defeat some tough defenders.

Whether or not the pre-placed sites should be pre-discovered or not, I really don't have that big of an opinion. I originally set them as #features because I thought it would be neat for players to first fight the special defenders, and then "discover" the site they were guarding, in the same manner sites are usually discovered, instead of it just being "congratulations, you beat the guardians, now here's your prize". But as I said, I don't have any strong opinions either way (though I would have hoped for people playing, at least for the first time, to not have peeked in the .map file).

As to whether the guardians in each special province are of appropriate strength, I fully admit they were done on a... I don't know what the word in English is ("mutu tuntuma" for you Finnish types)... on intuition, if you will. The types of guardians of each place are, as mentioned above, thematically appropriate (though the Harvester of Sorrows idea for Heavenfire Crater is good). The numbers can very well be changed. When I designed them, I didn't want the special provinces to be so good that players would immediately rush to capture them. That's why I mostly stayed away from sites that let you recruit mages. My vision was for them to be more like somewhat beefier defenders for a guaranteed site, or other goodies. Thus the suggestion for 7+ indie strength. I did test the defenders of each site before I released the map, against a "standard army", which resulted in lowering the strength in some provinces. So you can imagine they were quite tough to begin with.

Another consideration towards the reward part is that some places with special defenders are also of great strategic value, Arandor being the prime example. If you want to travel from the Old Road to King's Road, unless you go through Arandor, you'll be in for a long trek.

And finally, apparently the "many sites" tag doesn't stack with underlying terrain. Well... crap. I remember reading sometime ago on this forum that multiple terrain types stack with regards to population and resources, so I thought it would be the same for site frequency. This might prompt some change, I'll have to think about it.

*reads through own post*

It seems I have some trouble communicating my thoughts today. Summa summarum, I am very much interested in hearing how people view the special defenders, if they are too tough or too wimpy for the province they guard, considering both sites and strategic importance.


K.